A Lady Writing a Letter

Johannes Vermeer · 1660s

A Lady Writing a Letter - Johannes Vermeer

She was writing, and then she looked up. Vermeer's lady in a lemon-yellow jacket still holds her quill, turning her calm gaze toward us as if we had just stepped into the room.

The story behind the painting

A Lady Writing a Letter, also known as A Lady Writing, is an oil on canvas by Johannes Vermeer, believed to date from his mature phase in the mid to late 1660s. Wikidata simply gives the 1660s. Like many of his pictures, it was made for his patron Pieter van Ruijven of Delft. Many objects in it, such as the woman's coat, the tablecloth and the string of pearls, appear in other Vermeer paintings, which has led to speculation that his family owned them, and even that his models were relatives.

What to look for

The woman sits at a table, quill in her right hand, her head turned from the letter toward the viewer. She wears an elegant lemon-yellow morning jacket, a necklace and two pearl earrings. All the small objects are gathered on the table, close to the picture plane, and they contrast with the large shapes that form a geometric frame around her. On the wall behind hangs a dark painting covering two thirds of the width, showing part of a large string instrument, probably a violone. The canvas is small, about 45 by 40 cm.

Meaning and intent

Vermeer's estate inventory lists a vanitas still life with a double bass and a skull, and the painting on the wall is likely by Cornelis van der Meulen. Vanitas pictures reminded viewers that worldly goods and ambitions pass away. Placing one behind an elegantly dressed woman in a rich interior likely carried that message: all possessions and achievements end in death. It has also often been suggested that Vermeer painted in his models what he could not give his own wife and family, namely calm and affluence.

Legacy

After Van Ruijven the painting probably passed through his wife Maria de Knuijt and daughter Magdalena to her husband Jacobus Dissius, and was auctioned in Amsterdam on 16 May 1696. It stayed with Dutch owners until the Belgian politician Francois de Robiano bought it in 1827. His family kept it until the American banker John Pierpont Morgan acquired it in 1907. Horace Havemeyer acquired it in 1946, and Harry Waldron Havemeyer and Horace Havemeyer gave it to the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1962.

Lo sapevi?

Wikipedia · Wikidata

L'artista

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675)

genre art · Dutch Golden Age painting · Galería Nacional de Arte · pearl · quill

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